Epic weapons can be a funny thing. A ‘hit-or-miss’ thing, rather, when it comes to drop rate (among other things… yes, bad bad joke).

So I have to say that I feel pretty lucky to “finally” have gotten the Shattered Tortoiseshell Longbow from Tortos last night. It was my sixth kill, which means that with bonus rolls it was my eleventh and twelfth chance to get the bow. As usual, his corpse had non-hunter gear on it, but the bonus roll was finally the jackpot.

Of course, the thing looks terrible. Thank goodness for transmogrification. But seriously… it looks like it was made at the Thunder Forge, wrought of rock and stone and a shattered tortoise shell, and some other weird crap. It doesn’t look like something that you would hold at arms-length for several minutes while shooting. But I’ve generally been unhappy with the way almost all of the hunter gear has looked since, oh, I dunno… the beginning of Cataclysm. So no surprise there.

Like I said, transmog. At least Arathar, the Eye of Flame (Ragnaros) is proving to remain useful well more than a year after it stopped being so from a DPS standpoint. A true legendary, even if only in my heart!

The other thing that is so ridiculous about this bow is the gobs of expertise it has on it. At this point, shooting just about anything in the game is like shooting at a porta-pot from inside the porta-pot. Managing it was frustrating before; now, though, it’s just hilarious, because while this was a big upgrade over the LFR Durumu “crossbow,” the stat budget – over 900 hit, over 1000 expertise – is just so unnecessary that one might feel that his/her only options were to a) get even more frustrated or angry, or b) resign one’s self and start chuckling*, because the situation with hit and expertise is just getting stupid at this point.

However, I was prepared: checking out some other hunters that have progressed further than I have recently, I realized that this is the way of the world for the time being, and there’s really nothing that I or anyone else can do about it.

So, I’m not complaining. I’ll take the upgrade!

…

Thanks for reading this post by Mushan at Mushan, Etc. Comments are welcome!

Hehe. I’ve used 23 coins on bosses that drop 522 gun/bow/xbows. Nada! I’ve used coins elsewhere too and nothing on the zone-wide bow drop either. We killed tortos 11 times, durumu 9 times and iron qon 3 times. The other hunter won the roll on durumu when it did drop. Interestingly, he’s used coins as well. Since then, he’s gotten all four weapons. So it’s balanced on average. I have five pairs of boots from Tortos. I wish the T15 4pc bonus wasn’t based on ranged weapon damage as my upgraded 496 is my weakest link. ;-(

Yeah the RNG can be pretty crazy. For me it’s the tier legs. I really, really want those, in order to be able to shuffle some gear around. But Nalak wants me to have PvP loot only, it seems, and the only time I’ve seen a protector token off Ji-kun, I was on my warrior at the time filling in with someone else… and of course he has the damn legs already from Nalak. (I facepalmed in gchat when that happened…)

In fact, protector tokens have been way too scarce for us, a raid team that has two shaman, a hunter, a monk and two warriors. The vanquisher tokens seem to drop all. the. time. It’s beyond annoying.

I really hope that fortune smiles kindly upon you sooner than later, Kheldul. Weapons can be a bastard. I do consider myself very lucky.

Congrats on the bow! My first exam is Monday. If I get an A I’ll try and hop on next Friday for a bit and to catch up with folks via vent. I thought normal anatomy was tough, but heroic mode is ridiculous! Lol